The structure is modest in scale, roughly five and a half metres across, but what gives it an odd presence is the way it sits half-submerged in the landscape, its upper courses long gone, its interior sloping downward to the south-east and choked with rubble. This is the kind of feature that a person could walk past without registering, mistaking it for a tumble of field clearance or a trick of the ground.

The enclosure occupies a south-east-facing slope in the valley of the Cummeraloodery stream, a quietly remote corner of south-west Kerry. Drystone enclosures of this kind, built without mortar by stacking and fitting stones together, appear throughout Ireland across a broad span of prehistory and the early medieval period, and their precise function is often difficult to establish without excavation. Some served as small farmsteads or animal pens; others may have had ceremonial or boundary purposes. Here, the roughly constructed lower courses suggest a wall that was never especially refined, practical rather than monumental, built to last against the hillside rather than to impress. The bog has been slowly doing its work ever since, creeping up around the base of the stones and obscuring whatever the interior once held.